Can you go into some detail about what stats are being factored in here regarding luck and their predictability powers? What's a comfortable % error/standard deviation between teams when comparing various advanced stats? What specifically are you seeing from the Rangers and subsequently the Panthers as well to determine the Rangers are winning because of luck and the Panthers are unlucky?
Genuinely curious. I don't think I'm being romantic, I'm just watching the games. Certain guys/teams capitalize on their chances and favorable opportunities better than others. Which to me, suggests that as a talent or skill. Believing it's luck really just diminishes the entire sport and it's like we may as well just be simming NHL 24 franchise mode with weighted variables.
I agree with the bolded, and more. Because as the league gets closer and closer, and every matchup becomes closer to a 50/50 toss-up, not only does the moment-to-moment action on the ice seem less important to the outcome, but the off-ice action stuff too.
Once upon a time, a team loading up at the deadline or in the off-season was cause for excitement. A big-name player or a few depth players really felt like it could make a difference. As every matchup becomes a tossup, why should I get excited in the off-season about adding players to my team if, in the end, chance will dictate more than anything the player adds to the team on the ice? In every trade thread and free-agent thread on the Blackhawks board, I SHOULD be saying 'hell yes, lets get the best guy available' but because of the current state of the NHL, I'm invariable 'eh, is it worth it? How much impact can he really have? It seems like an overspend'.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, it's just kinda the way hockey is now under the current system for a variety of reasons.
As far as your first question, I don't think you can draw much of anything statistically through 3 games. This is obviously a problem, because on average that's roughly half a playoff series. So if, through 3 games, your eye-test is telling you that NYR has cracked Florida and the series is a fete complete, I'm not going to argue with you, because eye-tests are subjective and we may as well be arguing over how to describe the color red to a blind person.
For example, in the last Carolina vs NYR series, through 3 games I saw two evenly matched teams where one team had essentially won 3 coin flips. All those three victories still counted as victories, obviously, I just personally didn't take them as particularly indicative of how the next games would go (that is, I didn't think NYR would win another 1-goal game to sweep Carolina, as if eeking out 1-goal wins by the skin of their teeth was some kind of 'system'). At the end of the day, Carolina was in a hole too deep to dig out of. Even if they were the better team and carried play, they couldnt afford even one bad stretch. And obviously, they had one in game 6. So I would say, 'NYR were lucky to be up 3-0, but they weren't lucky to win one game out of the next 4', if that makes sense.
You mocked 'win-o-meter's earlier, and I agree with you. Each one is a black box with a unique model or algorithm spitting out an outcome. I don't think much of them. Every one of them has their own weighting for events and uncontrollable factors like sh%, their own margins for error and whatnot. I personally like Evolving Hockey's model because I feel it does the best job of weighting for defensive impact while most models weigh offensive impact much heavier. But it's really like finding a stock broker you trust, you gotta look at how their results weigh against the real world (or market) over time and build a belief in how they parse the data and info.
Outside of a model and simply to my eye, I prefer teams that control play, control the puck, and 'make their own luck' by dominating the shots and chances rather than teams that 'capitalize on opportunities'. I've just seen too many teams relying on goaltending, the PP, and 'timely scoring' crash and burn while a team that controlled the puck raised the cup. It doesn't happen every year, obviously, it just happens most years.
If the NYR win the cup this year, it will count just as much as any of the teams I felt didn't benefit as much from 'luck' and I'll be just as happy for NYR fans as I am for the winners of any cup. They neednt care whether their team was lucky or not, and neither will history.
